I am Alexis Kinloch, and I am an employee of the Winnipeg Arts Council.
I'd like to acknowledge that we're on the original lands of the Anishinaabek, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.
It's crucial that the government work closely with indigenous communities to make room in these laws for indigenous arts practices and knowledge-sharing to be recognized in a way that is decided by indigenous people and is respected and protected in the law. I urge you to make that a key priority throughout this review.
I've been a visual artist and writer for 14 years and I've worked in arts administration for eight years.
I thank you for the opportunity to speak about copyright and how it impacts artists. I would like to note, for the record, that I find it extremely problematic and scary that such an important public review was announced only two weeks before the event and that the invitation to speak came only two days before the engagement, leaving very little time to prepare.
Copyright is an important source of income for visual artists as they get paid when their works are exhibited, reproduced, or copied for classroom use. This becomes important because visual artists earn far less than the average Canadian, and three changes to the act could help improve their income potential.
For several years, CARFAC, the national association of visual artists, has been advocating for an artist's resale right, a royalty that artists receive when their work is resold publicly. They recommend that artists should receive 5% on future eligible sales. It is common for artists to sell their work cheaply early in their careers, and usually, if that work increases in value later and is resold, they are not paid. For example, Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak's famous print, The Enchanted Owl, originally sold for $24 and was later resold for over $58,000, for which she received nothing.
The resale right has been around for almost 100 years and it has been adopted by at least 93 countries.
Another change that artists are asking for relates to the exhibition right, which mandates that museums pay fees to artists when their work is exhibited publicly. Currently public museums and galleries are not legally required to pay fees to artists if their work was made before June 8, 1988, the date on which the right was enacted. It was argued that it minimized the financial impact that the new right could have, particularly for works in museum collections. However, this has led to discrimination against senior artists, as they are not always paid when their work is exhibited. This discrimination could be a charter issue. The exhibition right should apply to the normal term of copyright, the life of the artist and their estate, for 50 years after death.
The third request from artists is to place some limitations on the fair dealing changes that were made in 2012. Fair dealing has implications for all disciplines in the arts. Each year art works and publications are copied for use in schools, and visual artists are paid for those copies, but many universities are no longer renewing licences for that use, believing that they no longer have to because of fair dealing. The act doesn't specifically define what is fair, and while lawyers battle it out, artists' incomes are eroding. Between 2013 and 2017, payments to visual artists from Access Copyright declined by 66%. In 2012, we were told that changes to fair dealing would not have a significant effect on artists, but these numbers say otherwise.
We are not asking to get rid of fair dealing, but the education exception should not apply when it is possible to license work that is commercially available from a copyright collective or rights holder. This is how it works in the U.K., and we would like to see a similar model adopted in Canada.
Thank you.